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INDIAN NOTES 
AND MONOGRAPHS 

Edited by F. W. Hodge 




A SERIES OF PUBLICA- 
TIONS RELATING TO THE 
AMERICAN ABORIGINES 



SLATE MIRRORS OF THE 
TSIMSHIAN 



GEORGE T. EMMONS 



NEW YORK 

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 

HEYE FOUNDATION 

1921 



This series of Indian Notes and 
Monographs is devoted primarily to 
the publication of the results of studies 
by members of the staff of the Mus- 
eum of the American Indian, Heye 
Foundation, and is uniform with His- 
panic Notes and Monographs, pub- 
lished by the Hispanic Society of 
America, with which organization this 
Museum is in cordial cooperation. 

Only the first ten volumes of Indian 
Notes and Monographs are numbered. 
The unnumbered parts may readily be 
determined by consulting the List of 
Publications issued as one of the series. 



EMMONS — SLATE MIRRORS 




MIRROR OF HOMOGENEOUS GRAY-BLACK SLATE. LENGTH, S^s IN. 
Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History 



INDIAN NOTES 
AND MONOGRAPHS 




A SERIES OF PUBLICA- 
TIONS RELATING TO THE 
AMERICAN ABORIGINES 



SLATE MIRRORS OF THK 
TSIMSHIAN 



BY ^f 



'\; 



GEORGE TV EMMONS 



NEW YORK 

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN 

HEYK FOUNDATION 

1921 



EJ9 



"^o 



SLATE MIRRORS OF THE 
TSIMSHIAN 



GEORGE T. EMMONS 



SLATE MIRRORS OF THE 
TSIMSHIAX 

By George T. Emmons, 

Lieutenant, U. S. Xavv 




HE peculiar physical features 
of the Northwest coast of 
America, its ragged shoreline 
cut by deep fiords and in- 
numerable bays, and flanked to seaward 
by a continuous breakwater of islands, 
offered protection and exceptional ad- 
vantages to travel by canoe through 
thousands of miles of navigable channels, 
thus bringing together distant peoples. 
This resulted in a general interchange of 
ideas and products, and ultimately de- 
veloped a distinct cultural area very 
different from any other on the continent. 
But notwithstanding this intimacy 
through intermarriage and trade rela- 
tions, each people retained its tribal 



IXDIAX NOTES 



SLATE MIRRORS 



entity and excelled in certain arts and 
industries. Such might be the result of 
natural resources, as in the case of the 
Haida war and traveling canoe fashioned 
from the giant red cedar of the Queen 
Charlotte islands, or of artistic sense and 
skill, as shown by the same people in the 
carved spoons, ladles, and dishes made 
from the horn of the mountain goat and 
sheep, which they procured in trade 
with the mainland natives. Again, while 
spruce is equally abundant throughout 
the coast region, no other tribe ap- 
proached the northern Tlingit in the 
weaving and ornamentation of basketry 
made from its roots. Furthermore, the 
transfer of an industry is seen in the so- 
called Chilkat blanket that originated 
among the Tuimshian, but in the course 
of time was lost to them and is perpetu- 
ated by the Chilkat Tlingit, four hun- 
dred miles distant. 

But of particular interest are those arts 
or products that never passed beyond 
tribal limits, being confined to narrow 
districts. Of this class the stone mirror 



INDIAN NOTES 



TSIMSHIAN ORIGIN 



is a notable example: it was the product of 
the Tsimshian, and if known to their 
neighbors of the coast, the Tlingit, 
Haida, and Kwakiutl, it was never used 
by them, and is not represented in any 
of the very complete collections gathered 
among them, nor mentioned in the writ- 
ngs of any collector. 

The Tsimshian as a whole are made up 
of several different people from both the 
interior and the coast, that have come 
together through intermarriage, migra- 
tion, or accident, and in time have been 
welded together in a homogeneous body. 
They occupy the extreme northwest 
coast of British Columbia, the adjacent 
islands, and the valleys of the Skeena 
and the Nass. They comprise three 
dialectic divisions, made up of village 
bands, tribal as to territory, which is 
divided among the various clans, each 
of which is independent under its own 
chief. Hence there is no centralized 
governing power in either tribe or village. 

Those known specifically as Tsimshian 
live directly on the seaboard and claim 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



8 


SLATE MIRRORS 

• 




the lower waters of the Skeena as their 
fishing rights. Their principal winter 
habitation was at Metlakahtla until 
1835, when the Hudson's Bay Company 
established a post at Port Simpson, 
where the majority of the people moved, 
and it thus became the central trading 
point on. the northern coast, to which all 
the different tribes flocked; this brought 
prestige and wealth to the residents, and 
they became the most progressive and 
important of the three divisions. 

The Nishka people occupy the valley 
of the Nass and form a link between the 
coast and the interior. While possibly 
less advanced than the Tsimshian of 
the coast, they are equally intelligent, 
and are artistic in a high degree. In 
fact, I think that the most delicate and 
pleasing examples of carving and painting 
gathered throughout the whole extent of 
the coast are from this people. 

The Kitikshan ("people of the Shian 
or Skeena"), who claim the Skeena river 
as their own, are the original stock from 
which the other two Tsimshian branches 




INDIAN NOTES 



SLATE MIRRORS 




PART OF A CARVED MIRROR OF HOMOGENEOUS GRAY-BLACK SLATE. 

MAXIMUM WIDTH, 2~A IN. 

Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History 



TRIBAL DIVISIONS 



came; they are scattered along the upper 
reaches of the river and its tributaries. 
The Kitikshan are the most primitive 
division of the three, and from their 
necessities and the character of their 
country are more hunters and trailers 
than water men, although they look to 
the river for their staple food-supply of 
salmon. 

The stone mirror was common to all 
the divisions of the Tsimshian, and I 
found one specimen among their Atha- 
pascan neighbors, the Babine. Up to the 
present, after diligent search, only nine 
specimens have been located in either 
museums or private collections. None 
remain in possession of the j^eople, 
although old houses and village-sites 
may yet yield a few. That so few of 
these objects survive a century of disuse 
is not surprising, when the fragile material 
and their delicate proportions are con- 
sidered; for when the early European 
traders reached this coast, in the latter 
half of the eighteenth century, they 
distributed and traded unlimited numbers 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



10 



SLATE MIRRORS 



of small looking-glasses, which were so 
much more practical and so inexpensive 
that the native ones of stone were at 
once discarded. 

The Nishka claim to have been the 
originators of the mirror in this region. 
They fashioned it from a homogeneous, 
grayish-black slate found in a ledge on 
the north bank of the Nass, across from 
the old village of Kitaix, flushing the 
rock with water to procure pieces of 
suitable size for working. It is a fact 
that specimens found among the Nishka 
and the coast Tsimshian seem to be of 
like material and are similar in form, thus 
tending to substantiate the Nishka 
claim. The mirrors fiound on the upper 
Skeena are of a much harder, blacker 
stone, and somewhat different in shape, 
while the one from the Babine of Bulkley 
river is unlike any other in either material 
or form. 

The mirror was the property of the 
women of the higher class, and was worn 
suspended around the neck by a cord of 
hide or of twisted root, hanging over the 



INDIAN NOTES 





IJ 



il 

a. -v 



NISHKA CLAIM 



11 



breast. When required for use, it was 
wetted (most conveniently licked or 
spit upon) and rubbed over, then held at 
such an angle to the light as was most 
favorable for reflection. If required for 
a comparatively long period, it was 
rubbed over with a thin coat of grease or 
oil. The usual form had a handle at 
the narrower end, a contracted neck 
curved or notched, around which the 
neck-cord passed, and an expanded 
reflecting surface. Some were double, 
that is, polished on both faces; others 
were incised or carved on one side, and 
notched along the upper or lower edges. 
Whether these marks were decorative 
in character or were designed for identi- 
fication is not known, but certainly the 
work on the one illustrated in pi. ii is 
ornamental in a high degree. 

A comparison of all the known speci- 
mens shows the material to be of slate 
and exhibits general uniformity in shape, 
the most noticeable differences being in 
the handle and the connecting neck. 

The five specimens (pi. i-v and 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



12 



SLATE MIRRORS 



fig. I, 2) obtained among the coast 
Tsimshian and the Nishka are of the 
same grayish-black slate. PI. i and 




Fig. I. — Outline of a slate mirror in the collection of 
Dr R. W. Large, Port Simpson, B. C. (Length, 
43 in.; maximum widtn, 3? in.) 

fig. I show mirrors with plain faces; 
they are almost exactly alike in size and 
outline, and both are notched at top and 



INDIAN NOTES 



FORM AND MATERIAL 



13 



bottom. Those illustrated in pi. in and 
fig. 2 have straight sides, and the former 




Fig. 2. — Outline of a slate mirror from Nass River 
district, in the collection of the Venerable Archdeacon 
W. II. CoUison, of Nass Harbor, B. C. (Length, s in.) 

a longer handle; both are scored with 
lines or cross-lines on the back. 

The mirror represented in pi. ii, 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



14 


SLATE MIRRORS 




which was procured, with the one shown 
in pi. I, from a Tsimshian who knew only 
that it had been found about the Nass, 
is unfortunately broken, but it show^s 
the back of the reflecting surface elabor- 
ately carved in low relief. The principal 
design represents a crude face, more 
human than animal, which, bisected, 
exhibits two profiles difficult to determine. 
Below are three parallel divisions of lines 
and cross-lines. Ornamentation of pre- 
cisely this character is commonly found 
incised on the hunting and trapping 
implements of bone employed by the 
Tahltan and the Babine, with whom the 
Nishka living farther inland come in 
contact; it bears no resemblance to the 
delicate technic of Nishka art of the last 
hundred years, as known to us from their 
artifacts of wood, bone, and ivory, but it 
might express the work of a much earlier 
period in the life of this people when some 
of the divisions that claim an inland origin 
still retained the practice of .their ances- 
tors and had not yet adopted the culture 
of the coast tribes. 




INDIAN NOTES 



EMMONS SLATE MIRRORS 




SLATE MIRROR FROM UPPER SKEENA RIVER 
Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Harvard University. Length. 



FORM AND MATERIAL 



15 



The two mirrors from the Kitikshan 
of the upper Skeena are of a hard, black 
slate, quite different from that of the 
Nishka specimens. PL iv exhibits one 
which, in size and shape, is similar 
to the mirrors of the Xishka, but the 
upper and lower edges are curved, a 
difference noticeable in all the specimens 
from the interior. It is polished on 
both faces, incised with cross-lines on 
one side of the handle, and notched along 
the upper edge. 

PI. V represents what is possibly the 
most interesting mirror of all, by reason 
of its symmetry and its peculiarly notched 
neck, together with the slight history 
associated with it. It was the property 
of an old shaman originally of the Kuldo 
band, but who, after this (the farthest 
inland of all the Skeena villages) had 
been abandoned, settled at Kispiox. He 
said that the mirror had been dug up on 
the old village-site and handed down 
through generations in his family. At 
that time nothing could induce him to 
part with it, and it was only in later 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



16 



SLATE MIRRORS 




Fig. 3. — Outline of a mirror of slate, without grain, 
from the Babfne village of Hawilget, at the mouth of 
the Bulkley River canon, B. C. Provincial Museum, 
Victoria. (Length, 6f in.; width, 4I in.; thickness, 
i in.) 



INDIAN NOTES 



USE AMONG BABINE 



17 



years, when it had descended to a 
younger generation, which thinks little 
of the past, that it was procured. 

The mirror illustrated in fig. t^ was 
obtained from an older woman of the 
Babine living at Hawilget, on Bulkley 
river, near its mouth. There is no known 
history connected with it, except that 
it was an old family piece and had been 
preserved, as such things useless in 
themselves are treasured, for sentimental 
reasons by primitive peoples. It is 
quite different from any Tsimshian 
specimen, being of brownish slate, and 
larger and heavier, as it is at least half 
an inch in thickness. Both ends, more- 
over, are noticeably rounded, and the 
upper edge is scalloped. The handle 
and the reflecting surface arc barely 
separated from each other by a very 
slight notch for the neck-cord. 

For information respecting mirrors 
among the Dene, I wrote to Father 
A. G. Morice, whose intimate study of 
this people is so well known. He 
courteously replied at some length that 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



18 



SLATE MIRRORS 



the stone mirror was unknown among 
the Athapascan tribes of the far north and 
that he had never seen a specimen among 
them. Father Morice states: 

"Further, the age of such articles, I mean 
their antiquity, the time they came into use 
among them, is usually predicated by the kind 
of noun (primary or secondary root, common 
substantive or verbal noun) by which they are 
called. Now, the Carriers call a mirror pe-na'- 
tsdndO-ndl'en, which is merely a verb in the im- 
personal to which is prefixed the preposition pe, 
resulting in a verbal noun which means ' whereby 
one looks at one's self.' This characterizes such 
household and other implements as are adven- 
titious among them." 

The finding of a single specimen among 
the Babine is not significant. Hawilget 
was originally Kitikshan territory, and 
was given to the Babine only after a 
great rock-slide in the cafion of the 
Bulkley had so obstructed the stream 
that the salmon could not reach the 
valley beyond, thus cutting off the 
staple food of the former inhabitants. 
In settling at this point, only four miles 
from Hazelton, the Babine came in 



INDIAN NOTES 



SLATE MIRRORS 




SLATE MIRROR DUG FROM THE DESERTED VILLAGE OF KULDO, 
UPPER SKEENA RIVER, B. C. 

In the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation. 
Length, sM in. 



USE AMONG SALISH 



19 



constant intercourse with the Kitikshan, 
and being a crude people, copied much 
from their neighbors. This might readily 
account for this piece being in their 
possession — made by them or possibly 
dug up in gardening, as this locality has 
furnished some of the most remarkable 
and beautifully carved stone clubs that 
have been found in the Northwest. 
Mr J. A. Teit, of Spences Bridge, 
British Columbia, writes me as follows in 
answer to an inquiry regarding this 
article among the Salish: 

"The only direct information I have is from 
the Thompson [Indians], who claim that long 
ago, stone, generally of a very dark color, was 
occasionally made into or used as looking- 
glasses by them; they say the stone was rare 
and seldom to be found. It took a very high 
polish, and fragments used for looking-glasses 
were generally small (about 4 inches in width or 
height) and thin. Some of them were bored for 
suspension. I have never seen any myself. 
The Thompson and other interior Salish tribes 
also used looking-glasses made of mica, which 
mineral can be found in large clear sheets in 
some places. It seems these were comparatively 
common, whilst stone ones were very rare. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



20 



SLATE MIRRORS 



The remaining living old men here (Spences 
Bridge) can give me no further light on the stone 
mirrors, except to say they were oblong in shape, 
thin, and about four inches in length; some were 
perforated or notched at one end like some 
vsap-scrapers. They were very rare and none 
of the three men I lately interviewed remem- 
bered having seen any. Those they had heard 
of belonged to old men of Lytton or the neigh- 
boring part of Fraser river above." 

From these gencrrJ notes, particularly 
from mention of the shape of the sap- 
scraper, the material, and the size, the 
suggestion arises whether this article 
might not have originated hereabouts 
and have been carried to the coast 
through emigration or have been brought 
thither in trade by the more northerly 
interior tribes. 

The stone mirror is variondy named 
among the Tsimshian and neighboring 
people, as noted belov/: 

Tsimshian: nicks-klu-nesk gum tzcl, 'reflection 
of face,' also dza gdt, 'shaped like a 
fish-tail.' 

Nishka: na haun, indicating the shining skin 
of a fresh salmon, from na, a prefix 
indicating the properties of; haun. 



INDIAN NOTES 



NATIV E TERMS 



21 



'salmon' referring to its reflective 
quality. 
Kitikshan: an-giix hi la gal tkxi, 'in which to 
examine yourself.' 

A mirror of any kind is variously 
known as — 

Babine: pe-na' tsdndd-ndl'en, 'whereby one 
looks at one's self.' 

Haida: hung jow, 'reflection.' 

Tlingit: a tu mich ga teen, 'casting reflections.' 
The Tlingit, however, knew nothing 
of the stone mirror and had no other 
means of examining themselves than 
in a pool of still water, until trade 
mirrors were introduced. 



AND MONOGRAPHS 



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